Palestinian Mob Kills 3 in Courtroom

GREG MYRE

Published
6:00 pm CST, Monday, February 4, 2002

Associated Press Writer

JENIN, West Bank (AP) _ An enraged mob led by two dozen gunmen, including members of the Palestinian security forces, burst into a heavily guarded courtroom Tuesday and killed three men convicted in a vigilante killing _ highlighting a breakdown of law and order in the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian justice system was notable for its one-day trials and heavy reliance on security courts, rather than civilian courts, even before the Mideast fighting began 16 months ago. Since then, the legal system has become more chaotic _ as have many other services provided by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

Many Palestinians acknowledge the problem, but say restrictions imposed by Israel, combined with Israeli bombing raids, have made it impossible for the Palestinian Authority to be a proper government.

On Tuesday, in a court session lasting less than an hour, three members of the Kameel clan pleaded guilty to the murder Friday of another clan member, an officer in the security forces. Two defendants were promptly sentenced to death, but because of their ages _ 18 and 17 _ the sentences were reduced to 15 years each. The third man also received 15 years.

Police had expected trouble, smuggling the defendants into the makeshift courtroom before dawn and dressing them in police uniforms to disguise them, witnesses and security officials said.

On the street, an angry crowd of about 500 people, most members of the large Kameel clan, demanded the death sentence for the three. When someone in the courtroom shouted out the window, "15 years!" the crowd became enraged.

About two dozen gunmen stormed the building. They included members of the Palestinian security forces, though all were in civilian clothes, witnesses said. Most or all of the gunmen were believed to be related to Osama Kameel, the man shot dead Friday.

Police hid the three defendants in a bathroom, but were quickly overpowered by the gunmen who brandished automatic rifles and pistols. The gunmen quickly found the trio and shot them dead, witnesses said.

They then dragged the bodies into the street as the crowd cheered and gunmen fired into the air in celebration. The attackers quickly fled, and the outgunned police did not attempt to arrest them.

The vigilante killings "show that the Palestinian courts and the judicial system are weak and don't have the confidence of the people," said Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian political analyst. But, he added, "the Israeli restrictions on Palestinians are causing a semi-collapse of our system."

The public was barred from the trial, held in a makeshift courtroom in Jenin's Chamber of Commerce building, a site selected because Israel has bombed most government buildings, including courthouses, to rubble. Israel carried out the strikes in retaliation for Palestinian attacks, saying many of the deadliest suicide bombings have originated in Jenin, in the northern West Bank.

The killings marked the latest bloody chapter of violent death and retribution within the Kameel clan.

It began in 1988, shortly after the outbreak of the first Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation, when Osama Kameel, an activist in Arafat's Fatah movement, began killing suspected collaborators with Israel.

In all, six suspected collaborators in the Kameel clan were killed between 1988 and 1990 by a group of gunmen headed by Osama Kameel. He served several years in an Israeli prison for the killings, but after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, he was eventually freed and joined the Palestinian Preventive Security service.

Last Friday, Kameel was killed after being lured to a garbage dump on the outskirts of his hometown of Qabatiyeh, near Jenin.

Three members of his clan, Mahmoud Kameel, 38, Khaled Kameel, 18, and Jihad Kameel, 17, were charged with the killing and brought before the military tribunal Tuesday.

When the judge asked the defendants why they had waited so long with their reprisal, they said they believed the Palestinian security services were weak and they could now get away with the killing.

"We call on people not to take the law by their hands," said Zuhair Manassra, the governor of Jenin. "We have to maintain the judicial system in the Palestinian areas, to have it independent and free. But with the Israeli attempts to destroy the Palestinian Authority, it is extremely difficult to achieve this."

Internecine feuds are not uncommon among the Palestinians but they are usually spring up between rival clans, not inside a single one.

The worst case since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority was in June 2001, when nine people were killed in a single day of clashes between two families in the Gaza Strip.

The killing began when a man who had been a fighter in the first Palestinian uprising was shot dead in Khan Younis by the family of a man whom he had murdered as a suspected Israeli collaborator.

In a more typical case, a Palestinian policeman was gunned down last year on his way to work by the family of a merchant whom he had shot dead three years earlier for failing to stop at a road-block. Two people were later sentenced to death for the assassination of the policeman, but the sentences were never carried out because Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat did not approve them.